Category: 2019

GLENDALE—In recognition of Andrew Romanoff’s stellar record on Armenian American issues, the Armenian National Committee of America – Western Region, along with ANCA Colorado, has endorsed the former Colorado Speaker for his bid in the 2020 U.S. Senate Primary race.

“Speaker Romanoff has been an unwavering champion of the Armenian Cause and Colorado’s Armenian community for 17 years, which is why we stand shoulder-to-shoulder in support of his campaign to become the Democratic candidate for what is expected to be the most competitive U.S. Senate race in the nation,” remarked ANCA-WR Chair Nora Hovsepian, Esq. “From launching Colorado’s annual Armenian Genocide resolution to advocating for the Capitol Khachkar, Andrew has been a true hero for the Armenian community. The ANCA-WR calls on Armenian Americans across the nation to support his campaign,” added Hovsepian.

“I am honored by ANCA-WR’s endorsement. As Colorado’s next senator, I look forward to building on my close relationship with the Armenian-American community, advocating for strong U.S.-Armenia relations, addressing the ongoing repercussions of the Armenian Genocide, enhancing the partnership between the U.S. and Armenia in aid and trade, and stopping blockades and aggression against the landlocked republics of Armenia and Artsakh,” stated Andrew Romanoff.

In 2002, Romanoff introduced the resolution designating April 24 as “Colorado Day of Remembrance of the Armenian Genocide,” a pioneering step that paved the way for construction of America’s first state capitol khachkar (cross-stone) to commemorate the Armenian Genocide, as well as the designation of a portion of Arapahoe Road in Arapahoe County as the “Sardarapat Armenian Memorial Highway” commemorating the 1918 Battle of Sardarapat and the subsequent formation of independent Armenia. He continued to advocate for the Armenian community as a private citizen after term limits ended his time in office. In 2013, when Turkish and Azeri lobbies fought to prevent the khachkar memorial in Denver from being built, Romanoff returned to the capitol and led the fight that stopped them.

In addition to being a champion of the Armenian community, Romanoff boasts an extraordinary record of leadership. As president and CEO of Mental Health Colorado, he led the fight for the prevention and treatment of mental health and substance use disorders. Earlier, Romanoff won four terms in the Colorado House of Representatives—including two terms as speaker of the House. He earned recognition from more than 50 state and national organizations as one of the most effective legislative leaders in America.

Romanoff authored laws to expand the supply of affordable housing, protect the environment, and support the victims of domestic violence and sexual assault. He crafted an economic recovery plan to put thousands of Coloradans back to work, built a bipartisan coalition to pass it, and secured the largest investment in school construction in Colorado’s history.

Romanoff began his career at the Southern Poverty Law Center, joining the battle against Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi groups. His work there fueled a lifelong passion for justice—a cause he later championed at a state civil rights agency. The same commitment took Romanoff to Nicaragua in the wake of a brutal civil war. He taught English in rural high schools and continued teaching here in Colorado. In 2012, Romanoff founded the Posner Center for International Development, which is now home to more than 60 Colorado-based organizations, all advancing sustainable solutions to global poverty.

Romanoff has earned endorsements from nearly 300 elected officials for his U.S. Senate bid. In early July, Keating Research released the first poll of the 2020 Democratic Senate Primary, showing Romanoff leading the race.

“Colorado Armenians are very happy to see Andrew run for the U.S. Senate because we have worked with him since 2002 on Armenian American issues and we trust Andrew 100%,” remarked long-time community activist and ANCA Colorado board member Kim Christianian. “This race will surely be one of the most expensive and competitive in the country, and in order to win, Andrew needs each and every one of us to support him with the same vigor he’s supported our Cause,” continued Christianian.

“It may be long before we have another opportunity like this to elect a U.S. Senator who would champion Armenian American issues, which is why joining Andrew’s people-powered grassroots campaign is one of the most important investments that our community can make. I urge my fellow Armenian Americans across Colorado and the nation, regardless of party affiliation, to do their part at AndrewRomanoff.com,” concluded Christianian.

The Armenian National Committee of America – Western Region is the largest and most influential nonpartisan Armenian American grassroots advocacy organization. Working in coordination with a network of offices, chapters, and supporters throughout the Western United States and affiliated organizations around the country, including its regional office in Denver, the ANCA-WR advances the concerns of the Armenian American community on a broad range of issues.

BY PETER DIZIKES

MASSACHUSETTS (MIT News)—Economist Daron Acemoglu, whose far-ranging research agenda has produced influential studies about government, innovation, labor, and globalization, has been named Institute Professor, MIT’s highest faculty honor.

Acemoglu is one of two MIT professors earning that distinction in 2019. The other, political scientist Suzanne Berger, has been named the inaugural John M. Deutch Institute Professor.

Acemoglu and Berger join a select group of people holding the Institute Professor title at MIT. There are now 12 Institute Professors, along with 11 Institute Professors Emeriti. The new appointees are the first faculty members to be named Institute Professors since 2015.

“As an Institute Professor, Daron Acemoglu embodies the essence of MIT: boldness, rigor and real-world impact,” noted MIT President L. Rafael Reif. “From the John Bates Clark Medal to his decades of pioneering contributions to the literature, Daron has built an exceptional record of academic accomplishment. And, because he has focused his creativity on broad, deep questions around the practical fate of nations, communities and workers, his work will be essential to making a better world in our time.”

In a letter sent to the MIT faculty today, MIT Provost Martin A. Schmidt and MIT Chair of the Faculty Susan Silbey noted that the honor recognizes “exceptional distinction by a combination of leadership, accomplishment, and service in the scholarly, educational, and general intellectual life of the Institute and wider community.” Schmidt and Silbey also cited Acemoglu’s “significant impacts in diverse fields of economics” and praised him as “one of the most dedicated teachers and mentors in his department.”

Nominations for faculty to be promoted to the rank of Institute Professor may be made at any time, by any member of the faculty, and should be directed to MIT’s Chair of the Faculty.

A highly productive scholar with broad portfolio of research interests, Acemoglu has spent more than 25 years at MIT examining complicated, large-scale economic questions—and producing important answers.

“I’m greatly honored,” he says. “I’ve spent all my career at MIT, and this is a recognition that makes me humbled and happy.”

At different times in his career, Acemoglu has published significant research on topics ranging from labor economics to network effects within economies. However, his most prominent work in the public sphere examines the dynamics of political institutions, democracy, and economic growth.

Working with colleagues, Acemoglu has built an extensive empirical case that the existence of government institutions granting significant rights for individuals has spurred greater economic activity over the last several hundred years. At the same time, he has also produced theoretical work modeling political changes in many countries.

He has researched the relationship between institutions and economics most extensively with political scientist James Robinson at the University of Chicago, as well as with Simon Johnson of the MIT Sloan School of Management. However, he has published papers about political dynamics with many other scholars as well.

Acemoglu has also been keenly interested in other issues during the course of his career. In labor economics, Acemoglu’s work has helped account for the wage gap between higher-skill and lower-skill workers; he has also shown why firms benefit from investing in improving employee skills, even if those workers might leave or require higher wages.

In multiple papers over the last decade, Acemoglu has also examined the labor-market implications of automation, robotics, and AI. Using both theoretical and empirical approaches, Acemoglu has shown how these technologies can reduce employment and wages unless accompanied by other, counterbalancing innovations that increase labor productivity.

In still another area of recent work, Acemoglu has shown how economic shocks within particular industrial sectors can produce cascading effects that propagate through an entire economy, work that has helped economists re-evaluate ideas about the aggregate performance of economies.

Acemoglu credits the intellectual ethos at MIT and the environment created by his colleagues as beneficial to his own research.

“MIT is a very down-to-earth, scientific, no-nonsense environment, and the economics department here has been very open-minded, in an age when economics is more relevant than ever but also in the midst of a deep transformation,” he says. “I think it’s great to have an institution, and colleagues, open to new ideas and new things.”

Acemoglu has authored or co-authored over 120 (and still rapidly counting) peer-reviewed papers. His fifth book, “The Narrow Corridor,” co-authored with Robinson, will be published in September. It takes a global look at the development of, and pressures on, individual rights and liberties. He has advised over 60 PhD students at MIT and is known for investing considerable time reading the work of his colleagues.

As a student, Acemoglu received his BA from the University of York, and his MSc and PhD from the London School of Economics, the latter in 1992. His first faculty appointment was at MIT in 1993, and he has been at the Institute ever since. He was promoted to full professor in 2000, and since 2010 has been the Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics.

Among Acemoglu’s honors, in 2005 he won the John Bates Clark Medal, awarded by the American Economic Association to the best economist under age 40. Acemoglu has also won the Nemmers Prize in Economics, the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award, and been elected to the National Academy of Sciences. This month, Acemoglu also received the Global Economy Prize 2019, from the Institute for the World Economy.

WASHINGTON—The Armenian National Committee of America is renewing its call on U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo to support a new Millennium Challenge Corporation grant that would empower Armenia’s youth through a $140 million Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics education program for the country’s public schools.

In a letter sent today to Secretary Pompeo, who chairs the MCC Board of Directors, ANCA Chairman Raffi Hamparian asked the Secretary of State to review a financial analysis conducted by the World Bank that classified Armenia as an “upper middle income” country. “This highly contentious determination—made in the face of the vast and persistent poverty outside of Yerevan and across the Armenian countryside—makes Armenia ineligible for MCC grants,” explained Hamparian.

The ANCA Chairman and Secretary Pompeo last exchanged correspondence on the matter in May of 2018, when the Secretary of State stated: “We appreciate your idea of a new MCC compact focused on STEAM education for Armenia. […] We hope to see the Armenian government make progress on MCC’s eligibility criteria (‘scorecard’) this year so that the MCC Board of Directors may consider Armenia for a compact during the annual selection process.”

The ANCA is advocating for a STEAM MCC grant for Armenia that would, similar to the MCC compact recently concluded in neighboring Georgia, deliver over $75 million for school infrastructure improvements, $30 million for STEAM education projects, $15 million for vocational educational programs to meet the growing demand for information technology professionals, among other investments. The MCC grant would likely be apportioned over a 5-year period and would be subject to strict oversight by the MCC to ensure the program is benefiting students across Armenia.

The Millennium Challenge Corporation is an innovative and independent U.S. foreign aid agency that is helping lead the fight against global poverty. Created by the U.S. Congress in January 2004 with strong bipartisan support, MCC has changed the conversation on how best to deliver smart U.S. foreign assistance by focusing on good policies, country ownership, and results. MCC provides time-limited grants promoting economic growth, reducing poverty, and strengthening institutions.

The full text of the ANCA letter to Secretary Pompeo is below and available on the ANCA website.

Text of ANCA’s letter to Secretary of State Pompeo is below.

Hon. Michael Pompeo
Secretary of State
U.S. Department of State
2201 C Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20230

Dear Mr. Secretary:

I am writing to follow up on your correspondence to me last year expressing appreciation for the Armenian National Committee of America’s proposal that the Millennium Challenge Corporation explore a new Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math focused compact with the Republic of Armenia. We very much appreciated the enthusiasm you expressed, in your May 17, 2018 letter to the ANCA, to “advance the many shared interests” between the United States and the Republic of Armenia.

With the Millennium Challenge Corporation welcoming a talented new Chief Executive Officer, Sean Cairncross, we believe the time is ripe to take the first concrete steps towards a STEAM-focused MCC compact for public schools across Armenia. Similar to the very successful Science, Technology, Engineering and Math focused MCC compact that was recently concluded in the Republic of Georgia, a new compact for Armenia, focused on education, would help strengthen and sustain political and economic progress in the wake of its recent democratic transition.

With respect to moving forward with a new MCC compact for Armenia, the ANCA would respectfully request that the U.S. Department of State, in cooperation with other appropriate federal agencies, formally ask that the World Bank transparently review and, as warranted, revise its classification of Armenia as an upper middle-income country. This highly contentious determination – made in the face of the vast and persistent poverty outside of Yerevan and across the Armenian countryside – makes Armenia ineligible for MCC grants.

On behalf of the ANCA, I want to thank you for your past correspondence citing the enduring friendship between the American and Armenian peoples. We look forward to working with you, in your capacity as Chair of the MCC Board of Directors, to advance this friendship by initiating a constructive dialogue with respect to a new STEAM-focused MCC compact for Armenia’s public schools and the many thousands of promising students that they serve.

Sincerely,

Raffi Haig Hamparian
Chairman

cc: Sean Cairncross, Chief Executive Officer, Millennium Challenge Corporation

Armenia’s Consul General to Los Angeles Ambassador Armen Baibourtian honored long-time community activists and well-known benefactors Vahan and Anoush Chamlian during a ceremony in Fresno on August 10

Baibourtian, who was accompanied by his wife, Yvette, presented an appreciation award to the Chamlians for the crucial role the couple played in the establishment of Armenia’s Consulate General in Los Angeles 25 years ago.

Ambassador Armen Baibourtian, Consul General of Armenia in Los Angeles, accompanied with his wife Yvette Baibourtian, presented an Appreciation Award to prominent Armenian-American philanthropists Vahan and Anoush Chamlian at a special ceremony in Fresno, California.

On the occasion of the Consulate’s 25th anniversary, Baibourtian praised the Chamlians for their role in the founding of the Consulate, as well as their decades of generous support to the homeland through the Hayastan All-Armenian Fund, as well as their unwavering efforts to advance Armenia by sponsoring numerous projects in the mid-1990s.

Baibourtian expressed his profound gratitude to Vahan and Anoush Chamlian and stated, in presence of many Fresno Armenians, that the Chamlian family’s efforts and generosity were an inspiration to the entire California Armenian community.

For several years, the leading churches, political and civic organizations in the Western United States have been collaborating on various events and activities of pan-Armenian nature. Encouraged by the success of those events—among them the 160,000-strong Armenian Genocide Centennial March for Justice in Los Angeles—the leadership of the organizations decided to for the Pan-Armenian Council of Western United States.

The council will host events to further discuss its purpose and activities. Prior to that, it has issued its mission statement, which we are publishing below.

During the past several years, the leadership of Armenian religious, political and civil organizations of the Western United States has been engaged in a healthy environment of collaboration. In a spirit of unity, these structures have planned and implemented in the name of our greater community interests, in defense of our rights and demands as Armenian-Americans, and in furtherance of the welfare of Armenia and Artsakh all the while facing and overcoming any and all challenges collectively.

Undoubtedly, the best and most successful manifestation of the aforementioned collaboration and collective will were the Armenian Genocide Centennial commemorative events, during which the Community witnessed unprecedented collective efforts and results. Parallel to the Centennial commemorative events and in the years succeeding them, community organizations went on to create several joint working committees on various occasions. The spirit in which these committees operated further asserted the need for increased collaborative efforts.

Furthermore, it is evident that the Armenian-American Community in the Western United States continues to grow exponentially as its qualitative reach and abilities expand with each passing day.

Therefore, encouraged by the success of collaborative action, always mindful of the urgency of attaining national unity, and recognizing the necessity of gathering Armenian resources in service of our collective agenda, the signatory entities below have resolved to form a coordinating Council to pursue the Armenian Community’s collective interests and to further facilitate collaboration amongst them in the future.

The Council is to be known as the “Pan Armenian Council of Western USA.”

The Council was initiated by representatives from the signatory organizations below which have, throughout the years and each in its own right, gained the support of our Community.

Additionally, other community organizations which desire to be part of this collective effort and have a minimum of 300 active members are hereby invited to become members of the Council.

The advisory nature of this Council and its decisions are not binding on any of its member organizations. Thus, the Council’s existence does not confer upon the Council any authority over the activities of its member organizations.

The Council is driven by the principle of securing maximum participation and inclusion of all segments of our community, always mindful of protecting and advancing the principle of collaboration and good faith. Furthermore, the signatory organizations acknowledge the necessity to function in an environment of mutual respect and compromise.

The mission of the Council is:

*To implement and realize projects of a pan-community nature;
*To encourage and assist projects which advance the collective interests and the rights of Armenian communities across the Western United States;
*To undertake steps to resist actions and efforts which are contrary to the collective interests and rights of Armenians;
*To gather and apply the Armenian Community’s resources for the benefit of the Community’s interests as well as the welfare of the Republics of Armenia and Artsakh; and
*To always be mindful of the collective welfare and security of the Armenian Community.

Active and influential Armenian individuals who have a presence in the community shall be periodically invited so that they may bring their advisory expertise, or other unique resources, all for the purpose of contributing to and promoting the success of the above referenced activities and for the fulfillment of the Council’s objectives.

With the larger principle of inclusiveness guiding us, and with the clear intent of not leaving any organization or individual Armenian out of our collective effort, the Council shall periodically organize community-wide meetings and conferences based on previously set agendas, during which all interested parties shall have the opportunity to address matters of importance to the Community.

Based upon the aforementioned spirit of unity as well as the above referenced mindset, perspective, and objectives borne out of a spirit of Armenian solidarity, We, organizations and structures of the Western United States, hereby pronounce the commencement of a new and bright journey of collaborative effort and Armenian unity.

Western Diocese of the Armenian Church of North America
Western Prelacy of the Armenian Apostolic Church of America
Armenian Catholic Eparchy of Our Lady of Nareg of North America
Armenian Evangelical Union of North America
Armenian Revolutionary Federation of Western USA
Armenian Democratic Liberal Party Western District
Armenian Relief Society of Western USA
Armenian General Benevolent Union, Western District
Armenian Missionary Association of America
Homenetmen Western USA
Hamazkayin Armenian Educational and Cultural Society of the Western USA
Armenian Youth Federation of Western USA
Unified Young Armenians
Armenian National Committee of America Western Region
Armenian Assembly of America Western Region Office
Armenian Bar Association
Organization of Istanbul Armenians
Armenian Youth Association of California
Armenian Society of Los Angeles
Iraqi Armenian Family Association of Los Angeles